“I don’t indulge in outward complexity – I ride being stealthy about it, and Steely Dan are beacons for that”: Meet Sam Vallen, the shredder swiping yacht rock chords and turning them into one of 2024’s easiest prog-metallic albums with Caligula’s Horse

Reflecting on the tumult of the field on sixth album, Charcoal Grace, innovative metallic storytellers Caligula’s Horse dangle created a magnificent darker affair than their outdated works. It’s a file rife with long, protracted songs, mood shifts and fluid lead having fun with. 

Yet for guitarist Sam Vallen – who primarily based the Brisbane quartet in 2011 alongside vocalist and co-collaborator Jim Gray – powerful of his key songwriting work happens a ways off from his loved Ernie Ball Song Man guitars. 

“From the first allotment or two, we’ll initiate brainstorming the thematic direction of the track to swear the next ingredients,” says Vallen.  “I’ll relax and, with out an instrument in my hand, I’ll negate, ‘What mood would possibly collected this share streak to subsequent?’ 

“I uncover it laborious to sit down and generate a riff from scratch. That does no longer come as naturally to me as ample-image melody. I powerful recall if I truly dangle some more or less building to fabricate riffs within.” 

He argues that metallic musicians often note at pairing riffs together for the building blocks of songs. In Caligula’s Horse, their capacity is procedure more holistic.  “There must be this very deliberate capacity to how we make a choice one allotment and blueprint one other to be a accomplice to it,” he says.

“It has to dangle a motive to change tonality. That’s the build track theory is efficacious; it lets me flee by a bunch of solutions to seem at if something gets me cease to the build I wanna streak.” 

Beforehand he’s revelled within the topic of condensing an impactful solo into actual eight or 16 bars. On Charcoal Grace, he’s bucked that trend. “When I hit a roadblock, I recall to position my guitar down and hear to what I’ve purchased,” he explains. 

“I will plod spherical buzzing it and uncover some melodic solutions that join it together. I deem guitarists can truly dangle the inspire of letting your dispute lead you to expanding your melodic vocabulary with out an instrument mediating the 2.

“I truly strive to accumulate it feel indulge in it be this one huge, undulating belief that each and every particular person hyperlinks in some manner to this ample-image yarn. Reasonably a couple of my solos reference motivic parts, indulge in vocal melodies. The 2d you will be capable of dangle purchased something to lean on, it’s more straightforward to accumulate out of the traps of the manner you would otherwise fabricate a solo.”

Gorging on new tricks is something of an obsession for Vallen. In 2014, he wrote his honors dissertation on the harmonic vocabulary of Steely Dan.

“They’ve this good knack for taking stuff that’s, at its face, is amazingly sophisticated and advanced, and procedure it in such a mode that it truly would not seem it,” he says. “I fabricate no longer particularly indulge in outward complexity; I ride being stealthy about it and I deem Steely Dan are beacons for that.”

A key trick – swiped from the sleeves of Becker and Fagan and littered all around the Aussies’ inspire catalogue – is the usage of mu chords. Describing them as a “first inversion add2 chord” the build the lowest show performed is the 2d, third, or fifth in dedication to the foundation, they add a peculiar mystique to predominant chords.

Says Vallen: “Taking half in ample chords, especially in a more or less pianistic voicing the build the intervals of moderately cease to each and every other, turns precise into a mess of harmonics. It doesn’t matter how good the guitar or your tone is – it’s very laborious to translate onto guitar.

“Mu chords retain these intervals separated. If the bass is having fun with the tonic, there’s no want for me to play that show, too. With mu voicings you’ve with out warning purchased the beginnings of a vast chord that would possibly translate beautifully, even by distortion.”

For Charcoal Grace – a response to observations of a virus- world – ideal cadences would dangle felt disingenuous. “We desired to blueprint a work of artwork that we would possibly streak by all of that detrimental stuff with,” Vallen says.

“It be a gloomy, thoughtful and exploratory album, so the dissonance of mu voicings helps dilute the majorness of the chord. In most cases you desire that unravel, nonetheless you collected desire a chunk of of tension in there as successfully. Resolves don’t must feel conclusionary.”

One more ‘Stoley Dan’ is the usage of gash chords to make a decision on out the listener down unexpected avenues. “One trick – which changed into superb normal in Motown, too – is having a IV-I cadence, nonetheless giving the four the tonic of the 5,” Vallen explains.

“So at the same time as you would additionally very successfully be in basically the most necessary of C predominant, you will be capable of dangle purchased an F to C, nonetheless it undoubtedly’s truly an F/G to C, and it be an extraordinarily attention-grabbing manner of rising this ambiguity between the 2 most obvious cadences.  

“Or, in dedication to that F/G resolving to C, you unravel to the relative minor. They utilize that in Deacon Blues and it opened my eyes to the basis of utilizing gash chords to blueprint ambiguity with something that otherwise would possibly additionally very successfully be a chunk of obvious.” 

The album changed into tracked with what Vallen calls a “irascible allotment” of Song Man guitars. His precise JP 7 – which he’s owned since 2014 and aspects a basswood body and rosewood fretboard – is customised with Bare Knuckle Silos. They’ve proven to be a sport-changer.

“I’ve been working with Bare Knuckle for moderately a whereas and their pickups are truly 2d to none,” he enthuses. “They’re a superb, versatile, candy and elegant-sounding, scooped pickup.

“Then I’ve purchased a JP15 7, which is all maple and alder and is powerful more difficult, brighter and punchier as a consequence. I’ve purchased an area of Bare Knuckle Nailbombs in that. So between the 2 of them, and my Song Man Cutlass, which is my streak-to for single coil Strat tones, I’ve purchased a vast ingenious palette to arrangement on.”

His tone sport, meanwhile, has ventured down the digital wormhole. “Up till Charcoal Grace, I’ve often had an exquisite measured capacity to tones the build I borrow or rent whatever I’m able to and shoot all the pieces out till the excellent tone reveals itself,” he muses. “But the whole lot of this album exists, to some extent, within Neural DSP’s instruments. I’ve old my Quad Cortex plenty and I’ve dug into plugins.”

In the case of building tones, he finds third-birthday celebration IRs key to his structure: “If I’m able to’t load up an amp with all the pieces at 12 o’clock with a 3rd-birthday celebration cab that I’m truly familiar with, and accumulate a actual sound out of it, it be doubtlessly no longer for me.

“The cab affords me an beautiful, aim baseline that my ears are already familiar with. I would even be truly correct about how something feels and the procedure in which it responds to my having fun with. That’s usually the foundation of a rabbit-hole of exploration that goes to disgusting depths precise away after.”

From analyzing Steely Dan to methodical, emotionally led songwriting, Vallen thoroughly enjoys getting nerdy for his dangle Machiavellian ends.

“I indulge in digging into the minutiae of all the pieces,” he says, a wry smile beautiful. “I indulge in that it is likely you’ll perhaps well never live studying and, in an extraordinarily selfish sense, see what I’m able to smuggle into Caligula’s Horse.”

• Charcoal Grace is released on January 26 by InsideOut Song.